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Perform Under Pressure: Change the Way You Feel, Think and Act Under Pressure

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Not only do we not perform well with insufficient pressure, the resultant tedium can also be very stressful. The signs of boreout include: In sports psychology, the concept of mental toughness combines the traits of confidence and determination with the feeling of being in control of your own destiny. It might sound appealing, but in my work I take a completely different approach. I’ve seen the harm that can be caused by over-idolising confidence, determination and control, along with self-denial, sacrifice and fearlessness. This tough mindset might look strong and unbreakable from afar, but it actually prompts performers to bury their heads in the sand when faced by an intimidating challenge. Students of mental toughness are taught to ignore their worries and they will often self-sabotage. If you’ve fallen into this trap, you might recognise it in a speech you’ve put off practising, a paper you procrastinated over or a project sitting only half done – all with valid-sounding excuses, but also creating poor performance. The ball before, Donald had run when he shouldn’t. This time, he didn’t run at all, remaining motionless as Klusener hurtled towards him. By the time Klusener hared past him, all Donald had managed to do was drop his bat and look around forlornly. His legs wouldn’t move. “I looked up at Lance, saw him rushing to my end, and so I started to run,” Donald wrote. “My legs felt like jelly, as if I wasn’t making any headway at all down to the other end. I tried to get my legs moving properly. It was a dreamlike sequence, almost in slow motion.” As dusk fell over Medinah, Poulter secured a one-shot victory with a remarkable 15ft putt on the 18th hole, celebrated by a roar of delight and a scream of “Come on”.

Whatever sphere you inhabit, whether you’re a pro or amateur athlete, businessperson, teacher, full-time parent or something else entirely, you’re bound to have felt the pressure of your own expectations and the expectations of others. Almost everyone must cope with daunting situations, in which they don’t feel they have the skills needed to succeed and meet the weight of those expectations. I’m a sports psychologist and I help teach my clients mental techniques to deal with this kind of pressure. I’ve found the same practical techniques and principles that I teach to athletes are also invaluable to my clients from many walks of life, including business and theatre. You can see from the graph that pressure runs along the x-axis horizontally from low to very high. Performance is along the y-axis from low to high. We’ve segmented the bell-shaped pressure performance curve into zones of various colours. These colours represent a traffic light warning system. Green is good; amber is caution; and red is bad.

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When pressure is very high and sustained, we might enter the dangerous, burnout zone. In crisis, we experience exhaustion from chronic stress. Our body perpetually draws on its survival mechanisms as it believes it is in physical danger and the ‘fight or flight’ response takes over. Adrenaline and cortisol are now running the show and we have little chance of focussing on complex mental tasks or making good decisions. We need immediate rest. The best athletes are also more adept at brushing off disappointments during competition. The champion golfer Annika Sörenstam jokes that she never hit a bad shot in her life: “I don’t remember them.” Lesser players could be consumed by their mistakes, but Sörenstam would clinically dissect what happened, then get on with the business of trying to recover her position. By using a broader range of emotional language and avoiding pressurised self-talk, you too can start to replace words such as ‘should’, ‘must’ and ‘have’ with more open, alternative words such as ‘notice’, ‘awareness’ and ‘opportunity’. In moving towards this gentler language, you can adjust to the demands of a situation without allowing emotion to take over. It will help you focus more on process (the way you perform) over outcome (in terms of success or failure) and allow you to look at what you can do to live in line with your values, rather than fearing or avoiding potential failure. If you find you or your staff are heading for the burnout zone, then immediately take steps to reduce the sources of pressure. You can’t demand more of yourself or others when performance and health are suffering. Zone of Delusion

The pressure performance curve / stress curve showing the relationship between pressure and performance. Scott Boswell after bowling his sixth wide in the 2001 C&G Trophy final against Somerset. Photograph: Naden Rebecca Naden/PATo perform well under pressure, you need several elements in place: an ability to distance yourself from destructive thoughts and self-talk; a way to cope with overwhelming feelings; the mental flexibility to respond in the most effective way; and, finally, to know what matters to you. Thinking Under Pressure explains how the brain receives and processes information using short-term and long-term memory and the differences between Implicit long-term and explicit long-term memory. Dr Hearns references Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow to explain how analytical memory (slow) and automatic memory (fast) are used by a practitioner to make decisions whilst under stress. The chapter also busts the myth around multi-tasking and explains why multi-taskers are actually very rare. It is often said that nothing in training can exactly replicate the pressures of the biggest moments in matches. But even if that is true, more pressurised training can help athletes cope with pressure on the field. Managers and employees need to understand and regulate pressure to improve performance and minimise the harmful effects of stress. Benítez ME, Sosnowski MJ, Tomeo OB, Brosnan SF (2018) Urinary oxytocin in capuchin monkeys: validation and the influence of social behavior. Am J Primatol 80:e22877

Failure to manage anxiety and cope with the demands at a crucial moment can lead to a catastrophic drop in performance, known as choking. As the pressure in a match rises, so can an athlete’s anxiety.

Performance under pressure

He does not believe there is anything inevitable about choking – and that everyone can practise in a way that makes them less likely to choke. “Could I have dealt with that differently? Could I have had methods to slow myself down? I think I could.”

Anxiety is a reaction to pressure or stress. It tends to arise during performances that trigger the fear of losing, or fear of damage to your standing. The symptoms of anxiety are psychological – worry and fear – and physiological – including sweaty palms and an increased heart rate. Anxiety uses up attention and working memory, hindering performance. Ariely D, Gneezy U, Loewenstein G, Mazar N (2009) Large stakes and big mistakes. Rev Econ Stud 76:451–469 Separate yourself from your thoughts. We all have difficult thoughts, but when you learn to notice and accept but not respond, you stay more in control. Some athletes are gifted with psychological advantages from birth, but these are not immutable. Interventions designed to increase mental toughness can improve athletes’ performances. The more players practise, the more automated aspects of their movements become, helping athletes to manage anxiety and heighten focus. Maintaining pre-performance routines, as Sörenstam did, makes players more robust under pressure. Coaching designed to help players think independently, rather than being told what to do, helps develop implicit rather than explicit knowledge, and gives players the best chance of avoiding choking.Replace forms of self-talk that increase the pressure. Avoid telling yourself that you should do this or you must do that, and instead adopt more gentle and open language that is about opportunity and noticing. Managers should be aware of their own tendency to enter the zone of delusion, but also look out for it in their team members. Staff may say they are working effectively, but actually have declining performance. Managers should step in and ensure they take measures to scale down the pressure where possible. They should ensure staff are taking breaks and holidays as well as doing so themselves to act as positive role models. Summary It may seem counter-intuitive, but you get more done by working less. It’s your level of performance when you are working that counts. Strain

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